


Stripped

by Miss_M



Series: J/B in Depeche Mode Key [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Depeche Mode
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Nature, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Smut, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do people fuck like badgers?” Jaime asks, his eyes slit against the sunlight falling through new leaves, dappling them with shadows which are not true shadows. The ground is hard and dry beneath them, but he would not wish for a feather bed just now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stripped

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics can be found [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/depechemode/stripped.html). I own nothing.

“Do people fuck like badgers?” Jaime asks, his eyes slit against the sunlight falling through new leaves, dappling them with shadows which are not true shadows. The ground is hard and dry beneath them, but he would not wish for a feather bed just now. 

Brienne turns her head and looks at him, eyes puzzled and curious and tolerant of the twists and turns his mind takes. She no longer bothers to ask him to explain himself or to gape at him with her mouth open in astonishment. She merely waits for him to resume talking, as she knows he will. Her head is numbingly heavy on Jaime’s arm, but he doesn’t mind. Her eyes put the Spring sky to shame. Jaime smiles at the momentary thought of the sky as a young, fragile maiden dressed in blue, fleeing in tears before Brienne’s astonishing eyes. A part of him, a part that is all lust and savagery, wishes he could wear his white cloak to these little outings, imagines that pristine garment spread out beneath them, stained with dirt and grass, smeared with his seed, speckled with drops of sweat.

“People fuck like rabbits, don’t they?” he says to the leaves swaying in a balmy breeze. “And like stoats. I believe Tyrion once told me that in Dorne they like to fuck like snakes in the shade. So I wonder: do people ever say they’ve fucked like badgers? Or voles? Or nightingales, fit to wake the moon and make the stars blush. What makes rabbits so damned special anyway?” 

He looks at Brienne, and finds her torn between rolling her eyes or smiling, and saying his name in that way she does, so the syllables compass exasperation and patience and love. Jaime does not flatter himself when he calls it love, though the word itself does not pass between them easily. Things are too complicated as they stand. 

This is stolen time, time which does not belong to them, but Jaime consoles himself that once they leave King’s Landing behind these hours do not truly belong to anyone. Here in the Kingswood, hidden by trees, seen by none but the sun and each other ( _he doubts the gods see them, and even if they did, what more could they do to ruin Brienne, to damage Jaime?_ ), they lie on a blanket on the grass, and time trickles away like water between their fingers. 

He is playing a mummery with himself, he knows. There never is, never was enough time for either of his loves. 

Jaime looks over his shoulder at the end of every one of their escapes, and cannot conceive how the moments and the hours could have passed so quickly, how the greenwood can remain unmarked by what came to pass there. The bark on the trees ought to be awash in blushes at the echo of their fucking. The fresh Spring leaves should be bright red, shining like rubies, after the sight of Brienne’s arched back and pink nipples while she rode him, hers to take and work into a lather. The sun itself should be lingering, hopeful for another glimpse of Brienne on her hands and knees, her massive hips and thighs meeting his thrusts so as to put the most enthusiastic rabbit to shame. 

“Rabbits have soft paws rather than knees which get scraped,” Brienne muses, lifting her eyebrows pointedly at her raw knees. “And they breed a lot, I believe.” 

Jaime shakes his head with ponderous mock disapproval, nudges her with his own scraped knee. “Then a septon or some dry stick of a maester must have come up with that expression. If breeding always came after fucking, you’d have sprouted floppy ears long ago, my lady.” 

He leers at her, and she blushes prettily. He has come to think of her blushes as pretty, how they warm her skin so her freckles stand out, make her eyes sparkle. 

“Perhaps male rabbits are not as considerate as you, ser.” Brienne is not looking at him, her voice atremble with suppressed laughter and a soft shiver of regret. 

She does not mourn that he did not spill inside her, as he almost never does. No, it is something else. She too is feeling the quick scurry of time, their day away from the capital and that nest of vipers otherwise known as the royal court drawing to its end much too quickly. And if Jaime knows his wench, she is starting to remember that the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard takes no wife or mistress, and should not steal time away from his vows and duties to fuck in the forest. 

Even if _this_ Lord Commander barely managed to hold on to those vows for the few moons it took to stand vigil for his father, pacify the Riverlands, and come back to the capital with Brienne in tow. A long Winter later, at least they do not have to hide in dank, draughty corners of the Red Keep, Jaime haunted by too many memories of years of secret fumbles with Cersei, Brienne’s lips dry and soiled with city dust, the metallic, ashy taste of her honor bending, bending, and almost cracking under the strain. Her quest sacrificed to the terror she had felt on Jaime’s behalf when faced with the Brotherhood Without Banners, her vow to Lady Stark abandoned so Jaime could keep his vows, at least some of them, at least some of the time. Out here, among the trees, they can pretend they are no more than their first names, just two peasants rutting in the green, poor and free, though they are still hiding, letting the forest enfold them and expose them only to sun and sky. Nothing out here truly belongs to them any more than any part of the capital or the whole godsforsaken Seven Kingdoms does. Any more than they belong to each other in any fashion which the world would recognize and honor. 

Jaime nuzzles the sweat-matted hair by Brienne’s ear. “Tell me the words,” he whispers. The sun is dipping toward the west, and he needs to hear her say it before they head back. Even though it’s a honeyed dagger which soothes and makes him shiver, then hurts him all the more, a poisoned bite. Even though it always makes her weep. “Tell me.”

She lies silent and still. No breeze sighs through the leaves above them, the forest holding its breath to hear her and be transfixed as by the icy winds of yesteryear. 

“Jaime.” His name on Brienne’s tongue makes Jaime want to weep like a child and fight like a drunk and fuck like a lion, a stoat, a badger, the whole thrice-damned heraldic pageantry. Brienne’s voice wavers like a thin blade, her breaths are short, helping her control herself. 

“Jaime,” she says. “Love. Husband. Lover. Lord. Friend. Comrade. Oathkeeper.” She pauses, weighing that last one, her tongue the scales on which the Father measures a man’s soul. She never was one to let another’s truth bend her, which is why hers are the only words Jaime holds as law. “Everything,” she finishes, and he knows he will find her cheek wet when he presses his lips to it, to her eye, her broken nose, her mouth, tense yet trembling. 

“Thank you,” he whispers against her mouth. “Thank you, my lady.” Some of the words he taught her, she came up with others herself. They vary from stolen day to stolen day, but the meaning is always the same. Sometimes he speaks them too, though they weigh more, have more substance when spoken by Brienne, so cautious of tongue. And like all words, they are just wind in the end, even if no less real because they exist only between the two of them. 

Brienne opens her mouth and lets him in, her tears on his tongue. The last grapple, the last fuck is always desperate, however much they try to savor it. It might as well be the last one ever, for after it they must don their clothes and their names, Lord Commander, Maid of Tarth, and ride back to their lives, which barely touch except in secret and in rumor. 

Jaime wishes, not for the first time, they were courageous and foolish enough to run away for keeps, to stay in the forest until time strips all flesh from their bones and nobody ever finds them. Wishes he were strong enough to abandon his child-king and his mad sister. Or to force Brienne to marry and do her duty by Tarth, wishes she were strong enough to make that choice herself. Jaime has never lived more than half a life, but surely she deserves more, even if she claims she doesn’t want it. Even if he knows forcing her into some greedy oaf’s marriage bed would be less than half a life and worse than death to her. 

Brienne folds her legs around him, and Jaime strokes her ruined face, her soft, wet mouth, and wishes with all the unspilled rage he has in him that just once he could be with her like this in the light of a day which belonged to them. A day which was theirs and theirs alone, not stolen or bartered, unhidden from the world’s eyes.


End file.
